Free SISTER (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 4) by Lawrence de Maria

suddenly without a trace there are only two possible explanations: alien abduction or malpractice. I ruled out aliens. Malpractice can take many forms, but it usually involves client money. To lawyers of a certain bent, escrow accounts are like pots of honey to a badger. I checked with the Staten Island Bar Association and someone got back to me fairly quickly, saying that there was no record of any disciplinary action against Harry Frost, Esq. My call to them was more or less pro forma. The old-boy network is very powerful on Staten Island and the bar association’s list of lawyers it sanctioned probably took up the back of a stamp. Hence the quick reply. It’s an open secret in legal circles that attorneys who skate the ethical line are often nudged toward judgeships where they can do less damage.
    I called contacts at both the daily Staten Island Advance and the weekly Register and, after the promise of a couple of lunches, got them to go through their old morgue files. There were a handful of stories in which Frost was mentioned, but they all involved community or bar association events tangential to his practice. They were all so brief that my contacts just read them to me over the phone and I dismissed them. They weren’t worth a cup of coffee, let alone a lunch. But I was stuck for the lunches.
    Next, I tried the D.A.’s office. None of the younger D.A.’s remembered a Harry Frost so I eventually got bumped up to the man himself.
    “I knew him slightly when I was starting out,” Mike said. “Heard some talk that he wasn’t exactly Learned Hand, ethically. But I don’t think he was ever accused of anything. Officially, that is. I could check.”
    “Don’t bother. Something like that would have made the media. I was just wondering if anyone in your shop had a problem with him.”
    “Before my time, Jake. Did you try the Bar Association?”
    “Just to say that I did. If he wasn’t indicted for anything, what are the odds the bar association would care.”
    “I hear you. I’m hoping things will change once the new court complex is built. I guess I benefited as much as anyone from the ‘old boy’ network on Staten Island, but maybe it will prompt a new sense of professionalism in the bar.” Sullivan was referring to the new five-story, $230 million, State Supreme Court building was nearing completion nearby, part of a much-ballyhooed rejuvenation of the St. George area that was scheduled to include the world’s tallest Ferris wheel, a shopping mall, retail shops, a hotel and condos. The new courthouse complex would centralize all the local judicial departments, criminal and civil, which were now spread throughout several communities on the North Shore. “Of course, with our luck, they’ll find Jimmy Hoffa’s bones on site and it will never open.”
    The courthouse project had been delayed for years after construction workers uncovered the remains of 19th-century immigrants who had died in the quarantine hospital that once sat on the site. The plan was to rebury them in a memorial green at the complex, where presumably dogs and vagrants will supply fertilizer. As far as I was concerned, all the new courthouse meant was that parking in the area, which is also a commuter hub to Manhattan for tens of thousands of people, would go from unlikely to nonexistent.
    “Is it true that the new courthouse will be entirely funded by parking tickets?”
    Sullivan laughed. I thanked him and was about to hang up when he said, “Why don’t you try Sam Rosenberg?”
    “Nando’s old mouthpiece?”
    “Yes. I said I didn’t know Frost well, but I seem to remember that he and Sam had something going. Not partners, exactly, but interests in common. I could be wrong about that, but Sam knows a lot of gossip anyway. It’s his stock in trade.”
    “He must hate my guts. I cost him his biggest client, both financially and literally.”
    The corpulent Nando Carlucci had broken most laws and quite a few scales in his